Why weren't robes more popular in the west?

It looks comfy.

Did this actually happen?

so I've never ridden a horse before, can someone explain to me why you need pants to do it

friction

Is this bait? Have you ever seen how a person rides a horse? It might have been fine to use tunics in Mediterranean climates, but outside of that you needed pants not to freeze your legs off.

>They were. But if you mean why they stopped being popular, the obvious answer is horseback riding.
The Chinese robes had trousers as well, m8 considering the aristocracy rode horses. Hanfu robes either had slits on the side to facilitate mounting a horse.

Because it is an eastern fashion.
Diocletian imported the whole eastern semi-divine monarch-theme of government into the roman empire which is why robes since then have been associated with royalty.
Dunno why the clergy have tended ti use it tho, would love to be enlightened on that bit

Pants didn't really come into fashion after the romanisation of the germanic people untill the nineteenth century.

Friction from your thighs gliding along the side of the horse would lead to some nasty chafing if you stayed in the saddle without pants on for as much time as nomadic people did.

Priests and holy men everywhere wore some kind of long garment even before Christianity. Jewish temple priests did too.

This.

The commons among East Asians weren't in robes. Although the common women were.

Nabataean camel herders pretty much looked like this from evidence in Roman mosaics.

this is a jewish priest.
The apostles and/or common folk also wore robe-lke garments in the middle east.
Clergy were cultural continuations of both, see apostolic succession.

Just a smaller robe aka tunic to avoid having a long garment that gets dirty or in the way from the laboral peasant life.

>Dunno why the clergy have tended ti use it tho, would love to be enlightened on that bit

Because the Clergy used to be considered public officials under Rome. This carried over to the Christian Clergy in the Late Empire.

There's a big reason why Mitres are a thing.
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitre
>The camelaucum (Greek: kαμιλαύkιον, kamilaukion), the headdress, that both the mitre and the Papal tiara stem from, was originally a cap used by officials of the Imperial Byzantine court.

That's not what the bible says.
>(3:22)
youtu.be/-WLTcfWOKB4?t=202

Ever plow a field in a robe?
The average European pleb was barely above starvation for about 400 years. Many were simply worked to death.
From Roman times to about the 900s, there was a debate going on about horses Vs. cattle for plowing. It was finally demonstrated that horses could pull a plow equally as well, but 50% faster. Until then, everyone hitched their plows to cows.
The point being, the average pleb did dirty, hard labor for little reward. They couldn't afford to be going around in robes and couldn't do their work on them.

All too many people think of the renaissance or the Roman empire in its heyday when they think of the middle ages, but that's not how it was. Between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance was a period of shortened lifespans, grinding poverty, backwards thinking, moral bankruptcy, tyrannical rule, and brutal wars. The common man wore sack cloth, slept in straw, worked 12 hour days, and barely made enough to feed his family.

The romanticized knights and soldiers of the time were, in reality, hardly better off than the people who supported them. All the wealth was concentrated in two institutions - the church, and the king. It was considered a high honor to work any job within the kings castle. And the nobility considered the number of people working in their castle to be a measure of prestige. So they employed as many as they could. Which meant, while conditions were still deplorable, most workers didn't have a whole lot to do. Even so, living and sleeping in close quarters with rats, fleas, and lice was common fare for them.

dat ass

I'm aware of people who didn't use pants who were also accustomed to prolonged periods of riding but to my understanding these people are vastly outnumbered by the ones who did. It's not some universal rule that you need pants to ride so one would expect the existance of people who went pantless on their mounts. Alternativelt, my explanation might be wrong and there is some other reason, such as harsh weather conditions like with some settled people for why nomadic people went atrousing.

Thanks!

How would you show off your glutes, calves and cod piece in one?

>Between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance was a period of shortened lifespans, grinding poverty, backwards thinking, moral bankruptcy, tyrannical rule, and brutal wars. The common man wore sack cloth, slept in straw, worked 12 hour days, and barely made enough to feed his family.

That might be true for some periods and populations within the time span you mentioned but far from all. The medieval peasant enjoyed a myriad of holy days/festivals and while not particularly rich or well off, each day was not the desperate fight for survival that you paint.
Allbeit I wouldn't want to be a peasant living on the roman side of the border region between the Khalifat and the Byzantine Empire